Tim Wise: Perhaps it is President Obama who has internalized the idea that black people, even highly educated ones, are would-be malingerers, just waiting for a reason to go soft and “blame the world for trying to keep a black man down.”
We Twisted King’s Dream, So We Live With His Nightmare
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Tim Wise: If double-digit unemployment had been viewed as the emergency it is, when only people of color were experiencing it (as they typically have been, in good times or bad, year after year throughout this century), perhaps lawmakers might have seen fit to address the problem.
With Friends Like These, Who Needs Glenn Beck? Racism and White Privilege on the Liberal-Left
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Tim Wise: How even liberals, progressives and leftists, despite our advocacy for equity and stated commitment to racial justice, still manage to manifest and further racism — whether deliberately or not — in our activism, messages and policy prescriptions.
Racism and the Myth of a “Victim Mentality”
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Tim Wise: It’s a common argument, made by those who would rather ignore or finesse the problem of racism in America. If you can’t argue the facts, never fear, just suggest that certain facts are too dangerous to be spoken. The possibility that persons of color might adopt a victim mentality once they learn the extent of racism, means we simply have to move on, and tell those who are, as a matter of fact, often the victims of injustice not to dwell on their experiences too much, lest their commitment to self-help be vitiated.
Color-Blind, Power-Oblivious: Eric Holder and the Whitewashing of Racism
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It was all too predictable that Attorney General Eric Holder would be attacked for his recent remarks about race in America. To suggest that the nation is still haunted by the specter of racism is unacceptable it seems, especially since, with the election of President Obama, we have ostensibly entered the “post-racial” era. But, in [...]
(Proto)Typical White Denial: Reflections on Racism and Uncomfortable Realities
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Whites Deny Racism Continues to Exist ot long ago, after I had written an article in which I discussed white denial–the tendency for most white folks to reject the notion that racism is still a significant obstacle for people of color in the U.S.–I received an e-mail from a white man who insisted that my [...]
Obama, Black Voters and the Myth of Reverse Racism
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omehow I knew it would happen. In fact, I had even made a note to myself, indicating how long I thought it might take: twenty-four hours was my guesstimate, in case you’re interested. Turns out I was overly optimistic, because it only took about nine hours from the time that my latest essay hit cyberspace–a [...]
Racism, Sexism and the Deceptive Social Science of the Far Right
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hroughout the course of the Democratic presidential primaries, many have asked which is the bigger societal problem in the United States: racism or sexism? Although the question itself is absurd–the two are often interrelated, after all, and comparing systems of oppression is typically neither intellectually nor ethically very productive–there is little question that both remain [...]
Uh-Obama: Racism, White Voters and the Myth of Color-Blindness
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Here’s a sentence I never thought I’d write, at least not as soon as I am now compelled to write it: It may well be the case that the United States is on its way to electing a person of color as President. Make no mistake, I realize the way that any number of factors, [...]
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Red-Baiting and Racism: Socialism as the New Black Bogeyman
This noise is about race. It is about “othering” a President who is seen as a symbol of white dispossession: dispossession of white hegemony, white entitlement, white expectation, and white power, unquestioned and unchallenged from the darker skinned other.